Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions

Nicola J. Watson

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825

Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions

Nicola J. Watson

Description

Whatever happened to the epistolary novel? This is an innovative account of the disintegration of one of the principal narrative forms of the eighteenth century in favor of more authoritarian, third-person models designed to underwrite a new version of British national identity in the Napoleonic period. It offers provocative political readings of authors including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Maria Edgeworth, Walter Scott, Charles Maturin, William Hazlitt, and Lord Byron.

Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825

Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions

Nicola J. Watson

Reviews and Awards

"In this wide-ranging study, Watson is more interested - and, certainly, convincing and lucid - in demonstrating the way the errant letter evolves, all the while `retaining something of its scandalously sexualized nature'."--Eighteenth-Century Fiction

"Densely argued, clever in its interpretation of texts - autobiographical, biographical as well as novelistic - and displaying considerable sophistication in the deployment of contemporary narrative terminology."--History of European Ideas